House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said on Thursday that the Obama White House was contacting YouTube owner Google during the Benghazi terrorist attacks, working on the false narrative even before Americans were out of harm’s way and before the intelligence community examined available evidence.

The still classified Obama State Department email, according to Issa, shows that the Obama White House rushed to settle on the false narrative of the anti-Islamic YouTube video instigating the attacks, which was completely at odds with the conclusions reached by reports from the ground.

This new evidence destroys the Obama White House claims, communicated by Obama spokesman Jay Carney, that the White House obtained the false narrative from CIA talking points, since, according to Congressman Issa, the communication with YouTube was conducted by the Obama White House before any CIA talking points were concocted.

The subject line of the email, ironically sent at 9:11 p.m. (the attacks took place on 9/11/12) on the night of the attack, was “Update on Response to actions – Libya,” hours before the attack had ended.

“The e-mail shows the White House had hurried to settle on a false narrative — one at odds with the conclusions reached by those on the ground — before Americans were even out of harm’s way or the intelligence community had made an impartial examination of available evidence,” Issa said.

Issa has called for the Obama White House to declassify the email.

According to Issa, one of the items noted in the email stated, “White House is reaching out to U-Tube [sic] to advise ramifications of the posting of the Pastor Jon video.”

Issa scolded current Secretary of State, Democrat John Kerry, for just now turning over a classified version of the email, some 20 months after the attack, while calling on the regime to release a unclassified copy.

“Unfortunately, Secretary Kerry and the State Department continue to try to keep this information from the public, only turning this document over to Congress last month. While the information I have cited from this email is clearly unclassified, the State Department has attempted to obstruct its disclosure by not providing Congress with an unclassified copy of this document that redacted only classified portions outlining what the Department of Defense and the Secretary of State were doing in response to the attack in Benghazi that night.”

gypsy

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/05/12/1998581/issa-benghazi-still/ I believe this shows there is no scandal. and everything was reported like it happened. this Issa is an idiot, and a slimeball criminal. hope he keeps opening his mouth and prosecutes himself.

gypsy

Eric Cantor is slamming the White House over the newly disclosed Benghazi email, saying it shows the Obama administration “misled” Congress and the American people on the attacks.And:Rep. Jason Chaffetz on Thursday blasted the Obama administration on Benghazi, calling it a “major, major scandal” and saying Jay Carney’s comments were “laughable.”Chaffetz was speaking to Fox, which is devoting a good chunk of its airtime on Thursday to the House Oversight Committee's latest hearing on Benghazi. I've lost count, but I think the only thing House Republicans have spent more time on over the past two years is trying to repeal Obamacare, and just like with Obamacare, the only thing that's new about what Republicans are saying is the date on which they are saying it.Case in point: Cantor and Chaffetz were both teeing off on an a White House email released yesterday written by Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes. The email was about preparing Susan Rice, who was then our U.N. Ambassador, for Sunday show appearances following the attack in Benghazi. Obviously, therefore, Benghazi was one of the topics addressed in the email. Specifically, Rhodes proposed that Rice use the same talking points that the CIA had already developed about protests in Cairo spreading to Benghazi.

Those talking points proved to be flawed, but as Dave Weigel spells out, there is absolutely nothing surprising nor new about the fact that the White House relied on the CIA talking points to brief Susan Rice. By any reasonable standard of logic or evidence, this is a nothingburger, but we're talking about House Republicans and their Benghazi obsession, so reasonable standards of logic and evidence are the first things to go out the window. Instead, we're left with the House Majority Leader accusing the president of having "orchestrated" a coverup and the guy who will be the next Darrell Issa saying the new email is a "major, major scandal."

The reality, of course, is that the only thing that's been orchestrated is the GOP's phony outrage over Benghazi. If there's a major scandal here, that's what it is.

8:25 AM PT: And Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa himself says what happened after Benghazi might be a crime ... committed by the White House:

“It’s disturbing, and perhaps criminal, that these documents were kept from the public. It comes in a week where the American people have learned that you cannot believe what the White House says…and you cannot believe what the president says,” Issa said at an Oversight hearing.Oh, please. Darrell Issa doesn't believe that for a second. But if he does, he should act on his convictions and impeach the president. I dare him.[That's what all of this has been about from the word go. Obama won't give them a convenient personal scandal like Monica Lewinsky (which is why furious Republians have to keep paying the tabloids to publish stories that he's gay) so they've taken the only semblance of a scandal they've got and run with it. Just as in 1998, they'll lose, but they'll spend billions of taxpayer dollars, paralyze the government, and probably use it to try to hijack the next Presidential election. It's the only way they can win anymore.

gypsy

Bush knew it was the wrong info,investigations had already proved there were no weapons of mass destruction,thought we were not talking about Bush .SS it is only another Republican tatic because they want to degrade Obama and maybe make it where Hillary can't run they are making fools of themselve again wish I had kept counted,as I said wasn't going to discuss this, so much more needs to be done, jobs,vetrans pay and care. yes they spend(billions of dollars on a witch hunt that has cost 8s a lot of money,the purpoase is not founded nor will it be, they can make up all the lies they want Americaa does not trust congress.

SSC

Bush did not know, he was given false info from Rice and the CIA, proven. The WH knew of the attacks in real time, the poor guy and the video were made scape goats. Obama finally spoke and changed the attack to terrorists but it took him what 2 or more weeks to own up to it after sending Rice to 5 talk shows to lie through her teeth a she was told to do by the WH. Why do you think Stevens had begged for more security even on the day of the attack ? Proven Why is the WH stalling in releasing the e-mails all these months, what is hiding in them ? Trying to wait out the 2014 elections won't help and this was on Hillary's watch if she couldn't deal with Benghazi how in the world could anyone think she could be president ? Bill gay ????????? that is a new one, he can't keep it in his pants, gay is something I would have never thought of him...tooo funny

gypsy

no it was forty eight hours he(Obama) said twice in the time it was a terroist attack. what is the scandal! what are they hunting for no one has ever asked that. the only thing Republicans want is to make Obama look bad, so far,they are making themselves look like fools. plus/fox are the ones who put about the video even before anything happened.yes Bush knew there were no weapons of Mass Destruction. ok again I am through, trying to keep it sane,and a bit nice..you will believe what you want, and I will believe what I want, I do believe my belief is the truth,we shall wait and see,.. a lot of investigations and nothing found, that should be a clue. G"night SSC,enjoyed the conversation more on flowers and such.. Obama did not send Rice to five shows CIA Did and maybe schooled her on what to say,which I don't believe. yes stallins begged for more security months ago congress said no an help was cut,it is everywhere on the internet, this info.

.if there were something don't you think it would have been found after two years? nothing we discuss will prove anything,,Again g'night/ps how do you know Bush did not know? proof out there he was told there wasn't he went in anyway. he decared war on a country that did not threaten US Bush/Cheny are war criminals.

President Obama’s “you can keep your health insurance” lie is now being compared to President Bush’s “lie” that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The problem with the comparison is that only one of the claims was a lie.

“What about President Obama, did he tell the exact truth? I’d have to say no,” liberal radio host Bill Press said last week. “Should he have conditioned it? Yeah! He should have said, and Congressman John Yarmuth said this yesterday on our show, the president probably should have said 99 percent, he would have been absolutely right on. Or he should have said, by far most Americans, and he would have been absolutely right on. He didn’t, but I just have to say, for the Republicans to make a big deal of that, I remember another president saying Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and we had to invade that country and we did.”

The technical term for this is “total nonsense.” Obama lied, Bush was mystified.

Let’s start with President Bush’s pre-war claim that Iraq possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. We may not have found the W.M.D.s in Iraq, but that’s not because George W. Bush concocted the idea the weapons existed in order to trick America into war. Bush believed Saddam had such weapons because that’s what the American intelligence community, in general, believed. How do we know this?

1.) Read the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s W.M.D programs. “Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade,” the report reads. The report goes on to say it has “high confidence” that “Iraq possesses proscribed chemical and biological weapons and missiles” and “Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grad fissile material.”

2.) Read Bob Woodard’s account of then-CIA director’s George Tenet’s briefing of the George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq war. According to the Washington Post journalist, Tenet told Bush that it was a “slam dunk case” that Iraq had W.M.D.s. Tenet later said he was taken out of context, but that doesn’t seem to be the case and, in any event, Tenet doesn’t deny he was fundamentally confident that Iraq possessed W.M.D.s.

3.) General Tommy Franks, who led the invasion of Iraq in 2003, writes in his book that he was not only told by Egyptian and Jordanian leaders that Iraq possessed W.M.D.s, he was also told that Saddam would use them against invading American troops.

4.) Former CIA agent Kenneth Pollock has noted that the world’s most vaunted intelligence agencies, including some of those who opposed the war in Iraq, all believed Saddam Hussein possessed W.M.D.s. These include the intelligence agencies of Germany, Israel, Russia, Britain, China and France.

5.) As President Obama contemplated whether to authorize the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, he was told by CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell that the evidence indicating that Iraq had W.M.D.s before the Iraq war was “much stronger” than the evidence that bin Laden was living in the Abbottabad compound. “And I’m telling you, the case for W.M.D. wasn’t just stronger—it was much stronger,” he told the president.

Now, it turned out there weren’t stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. But it isn’t a lie if Bush believed the best estimate of the American intelligence community. Indeed, from accounts, we know he was mystified when the W.M.D.s didn’t turn up.

“What if we don’t find them,” Bush asked his National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice two months after Saddam Hussein’s regime fell, according to Peter Baker’s recently released “Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House.”

“Oh, we’ll find them,” Rice retorted.

They didn’t — but not because Bush and his administration didn’t believe they were there to begin with. You can debate whether Bush made the right call on invading Iraq. But there is really no debate over whether he believed Saddam Hussein’s regime possessed W.M.D.s.Contrast this with President Obama. Like Bush saying Iraq possessed W.M.D.s, Obama repeatedly told the American public, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan. Period.” But now millions of Americans are losing the health care plan they liked — and despite what Bill Press said, the percentage of Americans affected is far greater than 1 percent.

The key difference is President Obama almost assuredly knew what he was saying was a lie.

NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, among other outlets, have reported that Obama administration officials were well aware of the deception as the president was promising Americans they could keep their health insurance if they liked it.

“If President Obama himself believed this the first time he said it, he was poorly advised,” Christopher Conover, a health care economist at Duke University’s Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research, told The Daily Caller earlier this week. “The problem is that he said it at least 24 times, most of which occurred after his own rule-writers had estimated that 49-80 percent of small employer plans would have lost their grandfather status by 2013, along with 34-64 percent of large employer plans.”

“The same rule estimated that each year 40 to 67 percent of non-group plans not already grandfathered would lose their grandfather status,” he continued. “Given how extensively presidential statements — especially to a joint session of Congress — are vetted and fact-checked, it is pretty inconceivable that President Obama was not aware that he was engaged in some degree of truth-twisting.”

Comparing any aspect of the Iraq war with Obamacare sounds silly for the very good reason that it is kind of silly. But in terms of presidential truth telling, the facts seem pretty clear.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said on Thursday that the Obama White House was contacting YouTube owner Google during the Benghazi terrorist attacks, working on the false narrative even before Americans were out of harm’s way and before the intelligence community examined available evidence.

The still classified Obama State Department email, according to Issa, shows that the Obama White House rushed to settle on the false narrative of the anti-Islamic YouTube video instigating the attacks, which was completely at odds with the conclusions reached by reports from the ground.

This new evidence destroys the Obama White House claims, communicated by Obama spokesman Jay Carney, that the White House obtained the false narrative from CIA talking points, since, according to Congressman Issa, the communication with YouTube was conducted by the Obama White House before any CIA talking points were concocted.

The subject line of the email, ironically sent at 9:11 p.m. (the attacks took place on 9/11/12) on the night of the attack, was “Update on Response to actions – Libya,” hours before the attack had ended.

“The e-mail shows the White House had hurried to settle on a false narrative — one at odds with the conclusions reached by those on the ground — before Americans were even out of harm’s way or the intelligence community had made an impartial examination of available evidence,” Issa said.

Issa has called for the Obama White House to declassify the email.

According to Issa, one of the items noted in the email stated, “White House is reaching out to U-Tube [sic] to advise ramifications of the posting of the Pastor Jon video.”

Issa scolded current Secretary of State, Democrat John Kerry, for just now turning over a classified version of the email, some 20 months after the attack, while calling on the regime to release a unclassified copy.

“Unfortunately, Secretary Kerry and the State Department continue to try to keep this information from the public, only turning this document over to Congress last month. While the information I have cited from this email is clearly unclassified, the State Department has attempted to obstruct its disclosure by not providing Congress with an unclassified copy of this document that redacted only classified portions outlining what the Department of Defense and the Secretary of State were doing in response to the attack in Benghazi that night.”

How could we forget Tommy Vietor, the former Obama regime National Security Council spokesman, who famously told Bret Baier, during a FOX News interview when asked about Benghazi, “Dude, this was like two years ago!“?

Politico reports that Vietor has just been hired by Democrat presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton to assist her in the continued attempt to obfuscate her roll in the horrific Benghazi terrorist attack:

And in a sign of the concerted effort to rebut the ongoing controversy in a cohesive way, Clinton’s camp has brought on former National Security Council spokesman and longtime President Barack Obama hand Tommy Vietor to assist in the response to the book, a source familiar with the plan said.

Good luck with that.

Hillary is going to need more that Tommy Boy to brush over her key role in the tragic murder of four Americans, including her “friend,” Ambassador Chris Stevens, the first U.S. Ambassador to be killed since the week foreign policy years of Jimmy Carter in the 1970′s.

Stevens repeatedly made requests for additional security in the area where the British and Red Cross had already pulled out because of overly dangerous terrorism threats.

Sadly, Hillary Clinton, the head of the Obama State Department at the time of the attack on 9/11/2012, turned a deaf ear to Steven’s multiple requests in which he pleaded for help prior to the attack.

In January, a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Report, under the leadership of Democrat Dianne Feinstein, came to the conclusion that the attacks were “preventable.”

Clinton then furthered the lie that the terrorist attacks were fueled by a YouTube video, an evil attempt to silence free speech, stomping on both the First Amendment and the graves of the fallen, even repeating the lie at the ceremony when the bodies of the fallen were brought home. Clinton even had the outright gall to promise the families that the maker of the YouTube video would be brought to justice.

She knew it was a lie.

And when caught in her lie, she, in faux outrage, asked, “What difference at this point does it make?”

Hillary is going to need more than “Dude” to keep Trey Gowdy from getting to the bottom of Benghazi.

“No matter how long the investigation of a terrorist attack that killed four Americans takes, getting the full truth is what matters. The Select Committee is the House of Representatives’ commitment to getting this truth. It will conduct its investigation in the face of an all-hands-on-deck effort by defenders of the principal actors to further obscure the facts. While Speaker Boehner and I had both originally concluded that Secretary Kerry needed to promptly testify and explain why his Department had withheld subpoenaed documents, neither of us immediately recognized how opponents of congressional oversight would use this as an opportunity to distract from the Select Committee’s effort.

“I am extremely proud that the Oversight Committee’s investigation led to a bipartisan vote to establish the Select Committee. Our work pierced the original false accounts introduced by senior Administration officials in the immediate aftermath of the attack, and gave the American people many essential facts about events prior to, during and after that terrible night in Benghazi. As much as we fought to learn what we could, bring critical witnesses forward, and shame the Administration into disclosing more than it originally intended, I expect the Select Committee’s unified jurisdiction will afford it better access to the complete picture than any of its investigative predecessors. In attempting to cover up documents like the September 14 e-mail from Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and other officials have no one but themselves to blame for the increased scrutiny they should soon expect.”

Issa’s statement reads like a bad movie villain who is promising that he will have his revenge. I don’t know scrutiny could be increased any more than the six previous House Republican Benghazi investigations already have. Issa comes off in this statement like a spoiled child who has had his favorite toy taken away from him. Rep. Issa threw quite a tantrum. He accused Sec. of State Kerry of squirming and the administration of lying.

The California Republican had been trying for weeks to sabotage the House Select Committee on Benghazi after he was left off the panel. Sec. Kerry and the White House used the dueling Republican committees to split the GOP by declaring that Kerry would only testify before one House committee, not both.

House Republican leaders were forced to make a decision. Either they continue to let Issa run wild, or completely take his prized Benghazi investigation away from him.

The truth is that the Obama administration outsmarted Darrell Issa and the House Republicans. Issa can try to put a good face on this, but the reality is that he has been demoted and the Republican Benghazi circus has taken another turn towards revealing itself as a partisan freak sideshow

By Catherine HerridgePublished May 30, 2014FoxNews.comhttp://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/30/fact-check-clintons-benghazi-chapter-has-holes/

Excerpts of Hillary Clinton's forthcoming memoir obtained by Politico conflict with the factual record about what happened during and after the 2012 Benghazi terror attack.

Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., who sits on the newly formed Benghazi select committee and the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News before the excerpts were released that he is concerned the administration has not fully grasped the impact of the terrorist assault.

"We know that intelligence analysts on the ground knew instantaneously that this was Al Qaeda and its affiliates who had led this attack. And yet it took an awfully long time -- indeed today, it's still not clear this administration has acknowledged the depth and the risks associated with what it means to have an Al Qaeda affiliate actually take down an American [consulate]," he said.

In the limited excerpts published Friday from Clinton’s Benghazi chapter, the former secretary of State continued to defend the administration from what she termed a “political slugfest.”

Specifically, she defended the flawed explanation -- used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice five days after the attack -- that an obscure anti-Islam video fueled a protest gone awry in Benghazi.

"There were scores of attackers that night, almost certainly with differing motives," Clinton wrote, according to Politico. "It is inaccurate to state that every single one of them was influenced by this hateful video.It is equally inaccurate to state that none of them were.Both assertions deny not only the evidence but logic as well."

Further, she reportedly wrote that Rice relied on existing intelligence in making her statements.

But former CIA deputy director Mike Morell, who now works for Clinton's principal gatekeeper Philippe Reines at the D.C. consulting firm Beacon Global Strategies, testified in April that it was Rice who linked the video to the Benghazi attack.Morrell, who still faces allegations he misled Congress over the so-called talking points, said the video was not part of the CIA analysis as Clinton seems to suggest.

Morell told members of the House Intelligence Committee that Rice’s claims about the attacks evolving from a protest were “exactly what the talking points said, and it was exactly what the intelligence community analysts believed.”

However, he said: “When she talked about the video, my reaction was, that's not something that the analysts have attributed this attack to."

An independent review of more than 4,000 social media postings, conducted by a leading social media monitoring firm in December 2012, also found the YouTube video was a non-event in Benghazi.

“From the data we have, it’s hard for us to reach the conclusion that the consulate attack was motivated by the movie. Nothing in the immediate picture -- surrounding the attack in Libya -- suggests that,” Jeff Chapman, chief executive with Agincourt Solutions (now Babel Street), told Fox News.

Chapman said his analysts reviewed postings in Libya, including those from Benghazi, over a three-day period beginning on Sept. 11, and saw “no traffic in Benghazi in the immediate lead-up to the attack related to the anti-Islam film.”

The first reference to the anti-Islam film appears to be a retweet of a Russia Today story that was not posted until Sept. 12 at 9:12 a.m. local time. The translation reads, “U.S. ambassador killed in Libya during his country's consulate in Benghazi - Russia Today http://t.co/SvAV0o7T response to the film abuser.”

In addition, the video was also described as a non-event by Greg Hicks – deputy to Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack -- in his May 2013 congressional testimony before the House oversight committee.

Clinton went on to write: "Every step of the way, whenever something new was learned, it was quickly shared with Congress and the American people.There is a difference between getting something wrong, and committing wrong.A big difference that some have blurred to the point of casting those who made a mistake as intentionally deceitful."

But the written testimony of Morell shows the administration continued to stick with the “hateful video” explanation long after physical evidence and other intelligence showed there was no demonstration. Morell told the House Intelligence Committee that by Sept. 18, 2012, consulate security video reviewed by the Libyans showed it was a direct assault.

Yet, a week later, before the United Nations on Sept. 25, 2012, President Obama was still relying on the flawed explanation.

“There is no speech that justifies mindless violence. There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents.There's no video that justifies an attack on an embassy,” he said.

As part of its ongoing reporting, Fox News was first to report on Sept. 17, 2012, based on an intelligence source on the ground in Libya, that there was no protest.

Separate from the talking points, Clinton's defense of Rice could also be problematic because Rice inaccurately stated on three network Sunday shows -- ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press” and “Fox News Sunday” -- that security was "strong" or "significant" at the consulate on the day of the attack.

She told “Fox News Sunday” that former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, who died in the attack, were there to “provide security,” incorrectly linking them to consulate security.

At a press conference earlier this month, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said the administration should explain who briefed Rice on the talking points as well as the consulate's security status, and the individual or individuals should be fired. And if nobody briefed her on that, Graham said, Rice should resign.

"They're completely incompetent, or they were misleading her about the level of security because we were six weeks before an election, or she made it up on her own,” Graham said.

On requests for additional security, Clinton continued to insist that she never saw those cables, and the fact that they were addressed to her as secretary of State was a “procedural quirk.”

Fox News was first to report on an August 2012 State Department classified cable that said the U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an "emergency meeting" less than a month before the assault and concluded Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a "coordinated attack."

The authenticity of the classified cable, addressed to the office of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has never been challenged. It was significant enough that then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told lawmakers during congressional hearings that they were briefed on the cable’s warnings. Clinton, though, claimed it was not brought to her attention.

The cable marked "SECRET" summarized an Aug. 15, 2012 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi. It states that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

According to a review of the cable, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed "on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to 'Takfirist thugs.'"

In addition to describing the security situation in Benghazi as "trending negatively," the cable said explicitly that the mission would ask for more help. The details in the cable foreshadowed the deadly attack on the U.S. compound.

While the administration’s public statements have suggested that the attack came without warning, the Aug. 16 cable undercuts those claims – as it warned the Benghazi consulate was vulnerable to attack and indicates the presence of anti-U.S. militias and Al Qaeda was well-known to the U.S. intelligence community.

The Clinton book excerpts published Friday represent a fraction of the entire Benghazi chapter, which reportedly is 34 pages long.

SSC

Really Gyp, Fox has reported on every scandal that has taken place, NSA, IRS, Benghazi,Fast and Furious, VA radical appointees in Obama's cabinets( Jones ) CNN broke the VA story from their station in Phoenix, CBS then followed with reports as did Fox. Are you saying all of these are just fabrications ? I don't post from Politicususa, it is a radical site, all I had to do was look at the advertisement on the site, you will never see one positive thing about a Republican on there so they are totally biased.

benghaziNewly declassified documents reveal that high-ranking members of the Obama administration were aware that the September 11, 2012 assault on the American consulate in Benghazi was a “terrorist attack” only minutes after the battle began. In classified testimony given on June 26, 2013 to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, Gen. Carter Hamm, former head of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) revealed he was the one who broke the news to former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Hamm testified that he learned about the attack only 15 minutes after it began at 9:42 p.m. Libya time. Thus, the administration’s carefully crafted narrative that the attack was based on a video has once again been revealed for the lie it always was.

“My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,’” the General told lawmakers. ”I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta.” Hamm characterized the ability to meet with both men so soon after the attack occurred as a fortunate ”happenstance” because “they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.”

That meeting had been pre-scheduled with the president for 5 p.m. EST. A Defense Department (DOD) timeline notes that the meeting occurred one hour and 18 minutes after the attack began, and even as the battle at the consulate was ongoing. The DOD also revealed that an unarmed drone arrived over the battlefield during that time. As both men revealed in subsequent testimony, the meeting with the president lasted approximately 30 minutes — after which they never heard from anyone in the White House again.

Hamm revealed that he met with Panetta and Dempsey when they returned from that session.

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA) was the lawmaker who put Hamm on the spot regarding the administration’s video narrative. ”In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, was there any mention of a demonstration, or was all discussion about an attack?” McKeon asked. Hamm characterized the discussion of a demonstration as “peripheral,” but noted that ”at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. Smith, unaccounted for.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH), an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed the General more forcefully on the nature of his conversation with Panetta and Dempsey. He expressed his concern “that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration” rather than a terrorist attack. Hamm noted their was some “preliminary discussion” of the point, but emphasized that they were aware of what was really going on. “But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack,” he testified. Hamm also reiterated that “with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”

Hamm, Dempsey and Carter were not the only ones aware that a terrorist attack was occurring. The declassified transcripts show that key officers, along with several channels of command throughout the Pentagon and its combatants commands, were equally quick to label the assault a terrorist attack.

Wenstrup took the approach with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM’s Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region, that he did with Dempsey. Bristol testified he was in Dakar, Senegal when the Joint Operations Center called to tell him about “a considerable event unfolding in Libya.” Bristol called Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in Tripoli, who informed Bristol that Ambassador Stevens was missing and ”there was a fight going on” at the compound. ”So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack on the United States?” Wenstrup asked Bristol. ”Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack,” he replied.

When their investigations continue, staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee have indicated their desire to recall Panetta to ask him additional questions. ”He is in the president’s Cabinet,” Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), chair of the panel that collected the testimony, told Fox News. “The American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what’s going on, and I honestly think that that’s why you have seen — beyond the tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans’ lives – is that the American people feel misled.”

Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, echoed that assertion. ”Leon Panetta should have spoken up,” he insisted. ”The people at the Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they should have.”

As of now, the retired Panetta has resisted requests for further testimony.

Preliminary conclusions reached by those same staffers regarding Panetta’s earlier testimony that a rescue operation would have been impossible, agreed with the former Secretary’s assessment. But those same documents reveal it was because America’s assets in the region were badly arrayed. And not just with regard to Benghazi, but other Middle East hotspots as well. Transcripts from top military commanders paint a woeful picture of gaps in the position of assets worldwide. Examples of unpreparedness include the reality that no aircraft were put on high alert for September 11, and that the closet F-35 fighter jets to Benghazi, stationed in Aviano, Italy were unarmed. Moreover, the closest mid-air re-fuelers were 10 hours away in Great Briatin.

Other assets, including AC-130 gunships were 10 hours from Libya, and a unit of 23 special operators that comprise part of a discretionary, “in-extremis” force, were training in Croatia. According to testimony, they didn’t even make it to a staging base in Sigonella, Italy until 19 hours after the attack began.

Rep. Martha Roby (R-AL), the Republican chairwoman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, addressed this disturbing reality. ”It does not appear that U.S. military forces, units, aircrafts, drones, or specific personnel that could have been readily deployed in the course of the attack in Benghazi were unduly held back, or told to stand down, or refused permission to enter the fight,” she concluded. “Rather, we were so badly postured, they could not have made a difference or we were desperately needed elsewhere.”

The newly released documents also reveal that Gen. Hamm had been left out of the loop in White House-led discussions regarding military preparedness and force posture on the eve of Sept. 11. This revelation undercuts White House assurances that then-counterterrorism adviser John Brennan had ”convened numerous meetings,” and the president and his national security principals discussed “steps taken to protect U.S. persons and facilities abroad.”

Perhaps they they did. But it remains unknown why the head of AFRICOM would not be include in those discussions.

Hamm insisted that no one told him to stand down, there simply weren’t assets available to counter the attack. He repeatedly argued that having an F-16 do a fly-over in Benghazi wouldn’t have made any difference, despite that tactic being routinely employed to disperse enemy forces in Afghanistan.

AFRICOM and Pentagon officials insisted they were more worried about threats emanating from Tunisia, Egypt and Sudan on Sept. 11, 2012. “As I look back at the intelligence, I don’t see the indications of imminent attack in Benghazi,” Ham said. Yet Maj. Gen. Darryl Roberson, vice chief of operations on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon that night, seemingly confirmed the lack of military preparedness. ”We were postured as appropriately as we can be and we thought we should be around the world. It wasn’t just in Africa, in North Africa, that we had issues. We had issues around the world.”

“Appropriately postured”–but with “issues”?

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) remained skeptical of Hamm’s assessment. ”The extraction took an exceptionally long amount of time,” he noted. ”I still don’t understand, with two men down by 10:00 p.m. local time and then another attack at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, how at 6:05 in the morning the Department of Defense prepares a C-17 to go down, and that doesn’t actually depart Germany until 2:15 p.m. and doesn’t return back to Germany until 10:19 p.m. I have flown with you from Germany to Libya. It is not that far a flight.”

Another infuriating fact revealed by the documents regards a FAST team of Marines in Rota, Spain. They were apparently forced to deplane and change out of their uniforms before flying to Libya. “When we got people down do you really have — do you really actually let somebody push the military around and say, well, you are in the wrong uniform,” Chaffetz asked in disbelief. “Is that really a reason to delay the FAST team coming in to protect Americans, that they are not wearing a t-shirt?”

Nothing should surprise anyone with regard to Benghazi anymore. Not the administration’s wholesale lying about a video. Not the callousness of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who wondered aloud in congressional testimony, “what difference at this point does it make?” regarding the how and why of the attack. Not the equal amount of callousness demonstrated by a president who handed off responsibility for the operations to Panetta and Dempsey, and promptly disappeared, even as he showed up at a Las Vegas fundraiser the next day with his oft-repeated campaign slogan that was also a lie: “A day after 9/11, we are reminded that a new tower rises above the New York skyline, but al Qaeda is on the path to defeat and bin Laden is dead,” Obama told the audience.

That would be the same al Qaeda that, according to CNN, “appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any time in its history.”

The can be no doubt any longer what the president knew and when he knew it. On September 11, 2012 four Americans were killed in a terrorist attack. The president was aware of that reality shortly after 5 p.m. EST, even as a drone flew over the battlefield relaying video in real time. And despite all the lying, and incompetence, not a single person has been fired or held accountable, nor has even one member of the media asked the president where he was between the time he left Panetta and Dempsey, and boarded a plan for the fundraiser in Las Vegas.

Last Sunday, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates may have inadvertently given America some insight in that regard. He was describing Obama with regard to Afghanistan. “As I write in the book, it was this absence of passion, this absence of a conviction of the importance of success that disturbed me,” Gates said.

Americans might ask themselves whether that lack of compassion and absence of conviction extended to Benghazi.

Or perhaps former Carter campaign worker Pat Caddell had it right at an Accuracy in Media conference in June of 2012, when he lambasted the media and their unrelenting efforts to cover for Obama. “If a President of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified!” he declared.

gypsy

you still didn't come up with one fact proven, that fox has reported ,it is all propaganda.

your quote>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Or perhaps former Carter campaign worker Pat Caddell had it right at an Accuracy in Media conference in June of 2012, when he lambasted the media and their unrelenting efforts to cover for Obama. “If a President of either party—I don’t care whether it was Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton or George Bush or Ronald Reagan or George H. W. Bush—had a terrorist incident, and got on an airplane after saying something, and flown off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas, they would have been crucified!” he declared. then why wasn't bush, reagan crucified?

all this is peoples opinion, not one thing so far has been proven it is a scandal except in your republican minds, as also true for congress. and some media. their main objective is to discredit Obama because he is succeeding and they made a promise they would never approve of Obama.only reason I can think of is he is black,and he is doing a good job and all they have done is obstruct. not thing we say will make any of it true or false, it is just our opinion,I myself would rather see America work together to improve the mistakes made by former leaders, this kind of made up propaganda will not do anything but divide this country, Congress so far is doing nothing but making people hate them what good has any Republican done good for our country in the last 60 years, another question you have avoided.

gypsy

also >ps we will see the outcome,no matter our opinion. I hope whatever it is will be good for our country ,not just a bunch of witch hunts, I think the VA subject should have been corrected years ago, I do believe Obama is doing what he can for our Veterans, and will continue to fix the problems... now Byeee!

SSC

After all these years of being aware of the problem it is a shame it took it being thrown into the mainstream media and a full blown scandal to erupt for Obama to act, in his own words he was aware of issues years back, and who paid the price the Veterans, the very ones he is suppose to be Commander in Chief of, even though he has no military service record nor experience they still must obey him and he of all people put them on the back burner.Benghazi is very real and Dems since it happened have hidden e-mails, disobeyed court orders and ducked out of hearings, how long does it take them to get their story straight ??